Month: April 2014

Why is it that I find the the Heaven-accepting, death-defying premise of Warren Beatty‘s Heaven Can Wait deeply moving (especially the final scene inside the L.A. Coliseum), but the idea of watching Randall Wallace‘s Heaven Is For Real (Sony, 4.16) completely repulsive? Not just because of the loony-visions aspect (i.e., Jesus riding on a rainbow-colored horse), but because Gregg Kinnear‘s way of speaking to his on-screen son, played by Connor Corum, is horribly cloying and patronizing. (Never talk down to young kids — I always spoke to mine as if they were 30.) And Corum’s acting is quite grating. The trailer clips are oppressive enough — I can’t imagine sitting through the entire 100 minutes.

The film is based on Todd Burpo‘s 2010 book “Heaven Is For Real,” about a near-death death experience by his four year-old son Colton in which he visited a realm that he believed was “heaven.” Colton apparently claimed “that he personally met Jesus riding a rainbow-colored horse and sat in Jesus’ lap, while the angels sang songs to him. He also says he saw Mary kneeling before the throne of God and at other times standing beside Jesus.” Just reading that makes me quite angry. Seeing it in a film would be torture. Despite a 50% Rotten Tomatoes rating, Heaven Is For Real is expected to do very well commercially.

Right now the three Rotten Tomato reviews of Paul Haggis‘s Third Person are strongly negative, but a 9.10.13 review by Variety’s Peter Debruge differed: “With segments set in Paris, Rome and New York, this tony contempo romance serves as a Crash course in complex modern relationships, focusing primarily on issues of guilt and trust as they relate to love. Though virtually every twist on this emotional roller coaster feels preordained by its architect, [Haggis] leaves certain mysteries for the audience to interpret, making for a more open-ended and mature work all around. It’s hearty fare by arthouse standards, and should perform well with thinking auds the world over, boosted by a starry cast.”

Read more

There’s only thing that seems ill-considered about Cedric Klapisch‘s Chinese Puzzle (Cohen Media Group, 5.16) is the title. Yes, it’s largely set in Manhattan’s Chinatown and involves a somewhat puzzling tangle of relationships centering around a French writer in his late 30s (Romain Duris), but the title doesn’t even hint at the buoyant spirit and mood of the trailer. It hasn’t caught major festival heat so far, but it’s well liked. It played the London Film Festival last October. Positive reviews have surfaced in Australia, where it opens later this week. It’ll play at L.A.’s COLCOA Festival. I’m seeing it tomorrow morning at 10 am, and I hate attending screenings at that hour.

Read more

Women commonly say “you know what?” before declaring they’ve had it with you because you’ve crossed some kind of rhetorical or behavioral line. They’ll say it before deciding to terminate a conversation or a relationship or whatever. “You know what? We’re finished talking” or “You know what? I don’t think this is going to work out”…that line of country. I recall producer Stacy Sher saying this to me in the mid or late ’90s when I got a little too pushy during a phone interview. I’m mentioning this phrase because I’ve never once heard a guy, straight or gay, say “you know what?” This is strictly a female expression. There are very few that are exclusive to one gender or another, but “you know what?” is apparently one of them. Unless someone has different information.

In response to yesterday’s mystifying news about German director Fatih Akin having withdrawn The Cut, which had been submitted to the festival, for vague “personal reasons,” a reputable distribution source offers the following: “This is totally unconfirmed and 200 percent hearsay, but word has it Akin pulled out of Cannes because Thierry Fremaux wouldn’t offer him a definite slot in the competition, but wanted him in Un Certain Regard with a chance of being upgraded to competition if some other title wouldn’t come through. Akin felt shortchanged and didn’t want to go along with that plan.”

The source suggests that Fremaux’s alleged decision to include Christian Petzold‘s Phoenix as a competition title was behind the Cut snub, and therefore a factor in Akin’s withdrawal.

“It is considered a certainty — at least here in the German industry — that Christian Petzold‘s Phoenix, a drama starring Barbara‘s Nina Hoss, will screen in competition — everything else would be a big surprise (which apparently was the reason he didn’t even submit Phoenix to the Berlinale). Petzold (Barbara‘s director) is held in the highest regard among French cinephiles. Given Cannes’ problematic relationship with German cinema in the past, Fremaux probably didn’t want to have two German titles in competition. But that’s total conjecture on my part.”

Read more

Wally Pfister‘s Transcendence (Warner Bros., 4.17) opens on Friday. It looks and sounds like a reasonably intelligent sci-fier. Expensive-looking, lots of special effects, produced by Chris Nolan and Emma Thomas, etc. I wasn’t invited to last Friday afternoon’s screening but I’ll be attending tomorrow night’s all-media. Obviously there’s no buzz out there. I’m getting an idea that Transcendence is like a freshly-born, wobbly-legged zebra, still damp with placenta, and there are 10 or 15 wild dogs approaching. (I am not one of them. I have no interest in seeing this film get eaten.) A fair-minded, somewhat less-than-enthused friend says it’s “well made [but] I think it’s going to confuse people…I don’t know that the audience is going to latch onto it that strongly…it’s not that hooky an idea.”

In a 4.8 report by Thompson on Hollywood’s Valentina Valentini about a National Association of Broadcasters Convention panel, Pfister revealed that a dramatic line in the Transcendence trailer — Morgan Freeman uttering ‘It will be the end of mankind as we know it’ — wasn’t his idea. “That line is not in the movie,” Pfister told attendees at the panel, saying that WB’s marketing team put it in there. “I’d never write something like that.”

David Cronenberg‘s Maps To The Stars, based on a script by Bruce (Force Majeure) Wagner, is obviously some kind of “absurdist comedy about the entertainment business,” as producer Martin Katz has called it. It also seems a lot more engaging than Cosmopolis, Cronenberg’s Wall Street zombie flick. Cronenberg: “It’s very typical of Bruce Wagner’s writing…sort of a condensed essence of Bruce. And while it’s satirical, it’s also very powerful, emotionally, and insightful and funny. You could say it’s a Hollywood film because the characters are agents, actors and managers, but it is not a satire like The Player.”

The first three minutes of this Honest Wolf of Wall Street Trailer are somewhere between decent and not half bad, but then it hits a groove and takes off around the 3:05 mark.

Nancy Tartaglione‘s 2014 Cannes Film Festival preview piece contains a spot of dry humor: “I hear Terrence Malick’s speculated-upon Knight Of Cups with Christian Bale, Imogen Poots, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett is not yet finished.” Really? The flakiest, most whimsical director in the history of commercial cinema was shooting Cups about two years ago. If Cups is commercially released before the spring of 2015 I’ll be on the floor with amazement. I’m also wondering why there hasn’t even been speculation about Noah Baumbach‘s Untitled Public School Project (also filmed in 2012) screening in Cannes. It seems semi-logical to unveil it next month given the likelihood of Baumbach’s other in-the-can film, While We’re Young, opening later this year following what I presuming will be showings at Telluride/Venice/Toronto.”

Leonardo DiCaprio has agreed to portray a wounded, bent-on-revenge 19th Century explorer in Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu‘s The Revenant. The New Regency pic will begin filming in September for fall 2015 release by 20th Century Fox. Based on Michael Punke’s 2002 novel (which is based on a true story) yet another survival-against-great-odds film in the vein of All Is Lost and Angelina Jolie‘s Unbroken (with perhaps a sprinkling of Cormac McCarthy‘s Blood Meridien). The difference is that the Inarritu/DiCaprio/Punke project will basically be a payback/revenge flick. The second Webster’s definition of “revenant” is “a person who returns as a spirit after death; a ghost.” Yes, there was an obscure 2009 comedic horror film called The Revenant, but the title is probably a bad idea as the vast majority of moviegoers probably don’t know what it means. Titles can’t sound too cultured or fancy-schmancy — you have to grunt them down to reach your average Joe Schmoe. Just call it Revenge (nobody remembers the 1990 Tony Scott-Kevin Costner version) or Vengeance Is Mine (megaplex popcorn-munchers have never heard of Shohei Imamura, trust me) or something like that — plain and primitive. Yes, I know — I sound a bit like Harry Cohn here but I’m just trying to address the way things are.

Olivier Dahan‘s Grace of Monaco, which will open the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, has long been presumed to be a total wash. Initially slated for release by the Weinstein Co. in November 2013, them bumped to 3.14.14, and then yanked again in favor of the Cannes slot . I’ve no interest in, much less sympathy for, a classy actress who marries for money and then realizes a few years down the road that she can barely stand the guy she married, much less feel love for him, and that she feels trapped and wants out. No sympathy at all. There’s also the highly problematic casting of Tim Roth as Prince Rainer. Consider the face of the Real McCoy — kindly expression, nice-enough features, mellow attitude. Then consider Roth’s demon-seed features — the face of a malevolent bad guy if I ever saw one. There’s no crossover, no similarity, no appeal. Roth has the face of a scowling reptile. Grace of Monaco died the day he was cast.

Rainier Louis Henri Maxence Bertrand Grimaldi and his wife, Princess Grace (the former Grace Kelly) on a yacht sometime around 1961 or ’62.

Tim Roth, whose rancid, pissed-off vibe and generally unappealing features killed this movie the instant he was cast. I loved Roth in Nic Jarecki’s Arbitrage, but he can’t play husbands or boyfriends or anything in that realm. He has to play feisty gargoyle characters and/or attitude monkeys. Roth was perfect in Stephen Frears’ The Hit and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.